tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46515563079079253052017-07-29T01:33:31.401-07:00jdfieldeBooks and reviews for young adults and children. Kindle paranormal romance, urban fantasy...jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.comBlogger97125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-47301331827700117512015-02-14T07:37:00.000-08:002015-02-14T07:37:11.309-08:00Ukraine Story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">What's going on in Ukraine is horrible. I feel it, because Ukraine is close to my heart. I lived there for three years. Three of the best years of my life. It's a beautiful country, filled with beautiful people, and when I was there it seemed to be edging its way out of hard times.<br />Now its right back amongst them, worse than ever.<br />It was so good that I wrote a book about it. A book that's set in the ex-patriate community of Kiev, asa well as small town England. It's mainly about the kind of people that cross these boundaries, and about the kind of people, and adventures, they find when they do so. There's also a bit of steroid addition, some EFL, and a lot of anxiety.<br />Unsurprisingly I used a pseudonym. It's not for children. Be warned.<br />Tomorrow, February 15th, and the day after it's free on Amazon.<br /><br /><br /></div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ac&amp;ref=qf_sp_asin_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=jdfield00-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B00B9H5D8C&amp;asins=B00B9H5D8C&amp;linkId=QHOIJ7QMPR4RGEG5&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br /><br />Check it out. Happy Valentines.</div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-39798976385742616362015-02-01T09:26:00.001-08:002015-02-01T09:59:44.619-08:00The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, and why I might not write paranormal fantasy ever again.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LUayjO_KgsQ" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />I saw this movie. It's about an amazing genius, who contracts a paralysing illness, which kills everybody it touches.<br /><br />Except him.<br /><br />For no reason that anybody can understand, he survives, and goes on to become the most famous huge genius in the world, and publishes a book that more or less lays bare the deepest secrets of the universe, and time. Things that are pretty close to God, or magic.<br /><br />And it's a true story!<br /><br />The other one, starring the gorgeous Benebatch Cumberdict, is about a huge genius who joins the forces of good, against the forces of evil. He invents something thats even more magic than the ideas of the first guy. It's so magic that it lets him see into the minds of the bad guys and learn all their secrets (Gandalf, anyone?)<br /><br />He saves the world, though nobody knows it (Harry Potter anyone?) then in the ultimate tragedy he is cast aside by society.<br /><br />This one's true as well.<br /><br />And the thing is, these stories - as well as being as close to magic and the fundamental battle of good and evil as anything I've ever seen - NEED to be told. These are your history. You should know this stuff. They're amazing movies, too, with amazing performances. Eddy Redmayne deserves an Oscar.<br /><br />So, where does this leave me with my own, made up stories about magic and myth? I'm not sure. The way that in this blog I repeatedly come back to how, in the world, fact is stranger than fiction, &nbsp;(examples <a href="http://jdfield.blogspot.com/2011/08/lord-of-rings-vampires-whales-and.html" target="_blank">HERE</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="http://jdfield.blogspot.com/2013/11/minas-tirith-is-real-place-as-is.html" target="_blank">HERE</a>)&nbsp;cannot be a coincidence. I'm lucky enough to have travelled a lot, too have seen a lot of amazing things, and it frustrates me a bit that I don't write about that, instead of making up amazing things.<br /><br />My get out clause is that the King Arthur stories that I take advantage of, these are an important part of our heritage, too, and it makes me happy that I'm giving them a bit of exposure. Still, when I finish them I probably won't make anything else up. There are two many real stories to tell.<br /><br />Of course I say 'when I finish them' as if its happening soon, when actually its years and years away.<br /><br />Years and years and years.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-78268634547318943222015-01-24T13:28:00.000-08:002015-01-24T13:36:33.308-08:00What is the last divided capital city in the world? (The clue is Lawrence Durrell) And when is an island not an island?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A divided city is one split between two countries, like Berlin used to be between East and West Germany, for example.<br /><br />The answer (give or take a Jerusalem) is Nicosia, the capital of both the Cyprus's. I'm reading about it now, in the gorgeous technicolour prose of Lawrence Durrell and I was there last summer, celebrating my birthday. I flew into the Greek side, and spent most of my time there, near Larnaca. Nicosia is a must-see, though. I arrived on the Greek side, on the bus, and wandered around until I came to blocked streets, like this,<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y_zLwFmxvlg/VMPDJZbrkwI/AAAAAAAAAfQ/6cmrC2Qvl0U/s1600/IMG_0425.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Y_zLwFmxvlg/VMPDJZbrkwI/AAAAAAAAAfQ/6cmrC2Qvl0U/s1600/IMG_0425.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><br />&nbsp;and ironic shop names, like this.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p8DvyTY2NkI/VMPD3wxxDYI/AAAAAAAAAfg/RnKW1nxR51M/s1600/IMG_0423.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p8DvyTY2NkI/VMPD3wxxDYI/AAAAAAAAAfg/RnKW1nxR51M/s1600/IMG_0423.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><br />The area around is a no mans land of empty houses, and boarded, up, old buildings, that haven't been used, or lived in since the residents fled when the city was split up. It's an odd contrast to the rest of the island which often looks like this:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J-ZjXF9Ni5Q/VMPD0gBc2rI/AAAAAAAAAfY/6HmeBILD_zA/s1600/IMG_0445.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J-ZjXF9Ni5Q/VMPD0gBc2rI/AAAAAAAAAfY/6HmeBILD_zA/s1600/IMG_0445.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><br />Or this, which is the view from the mosque in Larnaca<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JspGRkLdZqE/VMPEgnNbHFI/AAAAAAAAAfo/MdMptV5xWkw/s1600/IMG_0396.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JspGRkLdZqE/VMPEgnNbHFI/AAAAAAAAAfo/MdMptV5xWkw/s1600/IMG_0396.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></div><br />Or this, which is an ancient church, built by the Byzantines, about fifty yards away from the mosque.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-50vDyvj_zx0/VMPEt1kwBzI/AAAAAAAAAfw/lfJ8RWMz6fs/s1600/IMG_0392.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-50vDyvj_zx0/VMPEt1kwBzI/AAAAAAAAAfw/lfJ8RWMz6fs/s1600/IMG_0392.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></div><br />Nicosia has its highlights, though, this is an ancient inn, which now serves as a restaurant and tourist centre. There are beautiful old streets, squares, and churches, everything built of this same, butter-coloured stone.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4SkF142ZW04/VMPEt-F13GI/AAAAAAAAAf0/EqPb00xztwA/s1600/IMG_0429.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4SkF142ZW04/VMPEt-F13GI/AAAAAAAAAf0/EqPb00xztwA/s1600/IMG_0429.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><br />You cross the border, though, and everything is very different. The crossing sits in the middle of the main street, which is a bit odd. You get your passport stamped, and you pass into a place that has no official recognition in the world, except by Turkey. You walk through it a while, realising something is weird, but unable to put your finger on it until...<br /><br />There are no western brands at all. Nothing. The Greek side is full of Starbucks, and Adidas, and McDonalds. The north side is a bit faded, the prices change from Euros to Turkish Lira, and not a single name is recognisable. The north of Cyprus doesn't exist, so nobody can do business there<br /><br />The definitive book about Cyprus is this:<br /><br /></div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ac&amp;ref=qf_sp_asin_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=jdfield00-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=1604190043&amp;asins=1604190043&amp;linkId=4VR4FWW6YPG52ZG6&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br /><br />Lawrence Durrell wrote one of my favourite books of all time: The Alexandria Quartet. This is different, autobiographical, more real and more rushed. Mainly it tells me how much of Cyprus I missed. It describes it so beautifully, mountains from the distance, looking like tumbledown, ivy-covered walls, and haunted mosques hanging over the silken sea. It is an enchanted island. I shall go back, and get a car, and explore the villages and quiet coves.<br /><br />I ate properly, squid and octopus on the sea front in Larnaka, and loukanikou and sheftalia on the terrace of a village bar. The main furniture of the terrace was a big, round table, where old men of the village played cards and shouted at one another. They all spoke English, learned in Kebab shops in Birmingham or Portsmouth. Still, Durrell tells me that I didn't eat enough, and I didn't try enough of the wine.<br /><br />The last thing that Bitter Lemons tells me is the story of how the break happened. A blissful island sleepwalking towards disaster. Now, to go from one end of the High Street to the other you need one of these:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OKFXiNMPaYg/VMQLaslcNsI/AAAAAAAAAgU/BA78wOhtFMY/s1600/IMG_1656.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OKFXiNMPaYg/VMQLaslcNsI/AAAAAAAAAgU/BA78wOhtFMY/s1600/IMG_1656.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div><br />A visa. Because when is an island not an island? When it's two islands. Read the book, visit the island. Recommended. I'll be getting another visa.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><br /><br /></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-28249611493027610392015-01-17T08:14:00.000-08:002015-01-17T10:43:33.820-08:00Smart Mouth Waitress, Writing Teenage Girls who are REEEEAAALLL<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I read a book because I came across the author on the Kindleboards Writer's Cafe and she seemed fairly awesome.<br /><br />The author is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dalya-Moon/e/B005EIH0QU/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1" target="_blank">Dalya Moon</a>, who is much better known as&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mimi-Strong/e/B00957J8SO/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1420213121&amp;sr=1-2-ent" target="_blank">Mimi Strong</a>, author of grown up romance stories. The book I read is called 'Smart Mouth Waitress.' It has a couple of elements that I love, characters that are authentically realised in every direction, even ones that have nothing to do with the plot, and realistic (or real) locations that I can completely see and would completely go to.<br /><br />The lead is Perry, the waitress of the title, and the setting is Saltwater City - a stand in for Vancouver. One of my favourite series ever is&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tales-City-Armistead-Maupin-ebook/dp/B007533WD2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1420214478&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=tales+of+the+city" target="_blank">Tales of the City</a>, which explored the same characters for book after book and year after year, just as much as the amazing city they lived in (San Francisco).<br /><br />Smart Mouth Waitress in the second Salt Water City Book. Sadly I think it could also be the last, and there's no chance of 'Tales of Salt Water City.' These days Mimi Strong seems to be attracting a lot more attention than Dalya Moon.<br /><br />So, standing alone, Perry is very cool. She's unconventional, speaks her mind, and has a lot to learn. Her story is kind of a coming of age. She's 18, but the story covers her first exploits with boys, plus day-to-day life at the I-wish-it-was-real cafe where she works and with her family and friends.<br /><br />The only downside to this story, and it is very slight, is that we don't actually see enough of it. The author has a bit of a habit of letting Perry tell us about what happens after it has happened, rather than letting the characters show us events as they go along. This extends to most of the most important events in Perry's life, which happened before the story began, and the fact that at the end her life moves on a bit less than I expected.<br /><br />That might just be me, though. It could well move on just as much as you expect. Give it a try. For sure the characterisation and dialogue are top-notch enough to make me properly jealous of Dalya's talent.<br /><br />I recommend it:<br /><br /><br /></div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ac&amp;ref=qf_sp_asin_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=jdfield00-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B007XCDST8&amp;asins=B007XCDST8&amp;linkId=6TLHQ2HBRUYPS3WP&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-15923583212126322662015-01-03T05:44:00.000-08:002015-01-03T11:18:08.492-08:00There's Only One Digger Bongo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">In my 'Christmas Post' I hinted at the stories I'm going to be releasing in 2015. Here's a bit more news.<br /><br />The next four stories I'm going to publish will be for 8-12 year olds. The first three will be about the Bongo family, each one short, telling a story about one of the children. First out of the blocks - probably - will be the 4th child, Digger. Here he is, courtesy of artist Damien Hazell - who is designing the cover art for all four of the children's stories.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EfBYdWbkKw4/VKFXhoRJCWI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/ziYZvJkCT-E/s1600/digger%2Bbongo%2Bpicture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EfBYdWbkKw4/VKFXhoRJCWI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/ziYZvJkCT-E/s1600/digger%2Bbongo%2Bpicture.jpg" height="400" width="276" /></a></div><br />The fourth book is a full length children's novel, featuring entirely different characters, and kind of reflecting stories like the Famous Five, which I adored when I was small. It stars four very different children, who live on the same street in a small, very generic town in the UK. The book is about friendship, and mystery, and what happens when the most exciting parts of stories cross over into real life.<br /><br />When that is released I'm going to turn my attention back to the Levels series. Each one of the existing four books will be relaunched, newly edited and with a new cover. There will be two more books, one that follows Song to Wake to, and one that follows 'Lullaby of Lies' and 'Reason to be Shy.' This last is the longest, most complicated story I've ever written and when I finish this post I'm going to get right back to it, editing for what feels like the twentieth time, in response to the genius comments of the brilliant&nbsp;<a href="http://ruthlaurensteven.blogspot.ro/" target="_blank">Ruth Steven</a>.<br /><br />In the meantime, though, get ready to meet the irrepressible Digger Bongo and the bonkers Bongo family...</div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-14522295060809755712014-12-27T08:41:00.000-08:002015-01-24T13:40:15.880-08:00In a Hole in the Ground there lived a...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">...hobbit.<br /><br />The legend is that this first line popped fully formed into the mind of Professor JRR Tolkien. From it he built one of the most successful, most loved books of all time, like finding a beautiful, shiny doorknob, and basing a whole (hole) house around it. You can even get the t-shirt.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ac&amp;ref=qf_sp_asin_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=jdfield00-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B00BINKQT8&amp;asins=B00BINKQT8&amp;linkId=GN3J7JUS2F76KTCI&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <br />The same thing happened to me. It was quite surprising. It formed the origin of the next story I'm going to publish.<br /><br />The line is <i>'There's only one Digger Bongo.'</i>&nbsp;Go figure. Where did it come from? I have no idea. The line popped into my head while I was walking to work one morning. It stayed there for the entire day, and by the time I went home Digger Bongo had built himself up a character, an obsession, and a background.<br /><br />Digger is a character in a children's story, that was quickly obvious. I haven't published stories for younger children before, and I know that you think of me as a YA writer, but I hope you'll have a look at Digger when he appears, or point younger friends and relatives in his direction. The first novel I ever wrote is for kids. In lots of ways I think its still my best, and hopefully Digger and his adventures will be the first step along the way to getting that first ever novel out and on Amazon.<br /><br />&nbsp;It didn't take much longer for me to realise Digger has a lot to do with digging holes. His family took a bit more time to assemble, until I remembered this...<br /><br /></div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ac&amp;ref=qf_sp_asin_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=jdfield00-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B002RI9YJQ&amp;asins=B002RI9YJQ&amp;linkId=LWSGHGF54434GDAU&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br /><br />The Family from One End Street, by Eve Garnett, that I loved when I was a little boy. We never owned it, but I borrowed it repeatedly from the library. It's about the Ruggles family, Mum, Dad, and seven children. Every child is a unique little character, and though their lives are ordinary, with that many people in the house there is always something going on.<br /><br />Unsurprisingly Digger has 6 siblings, and every one is very, very different. I'll write a bit more about him, and them, in a couple of days. I'm on vacation now, so there's more time for blogging, I promise.<br /><br />In the meantime, this is where I am. Very cool, don't you think?<br /><br />Merry Christmas!<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QrfElcky2T0/VJ7b8px4-wI/AAAAAAAAAd8/sEG7mA7L04w/s1600/IMG_1468.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QrfElcky2T0/VJ7b8px4-wI/AAAAAAAAAd8/sEG7mA7L04w/s1600/IMG_1468.JPG" height="320" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-54575299463223622642014-11-21T09:56:00.000-08:002014-11-21T09:56:39.643-08:00I'm Back<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The date at the top of each post is like I've personally been blog shamed.<br />Honestly I've been busy, though. Not busy writing or selling books, unfortunately. Just busy with life and travels. Here are some of the places I've been.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D66v36X2CrA/VG9MEpNp-7I/AAAAAAAAAcU/60mr1ALCMRs/s1600/IMG_0251.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D66v36X2CrA/VG9MEpNp-7I/AAAAAAAAAcU/60mr1ALCMRs/s1600/IMG_0251.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>&nbsp;Dubai. The tallest building in the world. Dubai is a made up city, like the trade city where Luke and Obi-wan go in the first star wars film. My hotel was filled with Europeans (in an Arab country) but boasted a Phillipino nightclub on the 2nd floor. Just... because.<br /><br />The fountain show at the Dubai Mall is off the hook. That's all.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d9BNsB6Cdvs/VG9MaBjd2oI/AAAAAAAAAcc/5oLqx-qIr7M/s1600/IMG_0265.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d9BNsB6Cdvs/VG9MaBjd2oI/AAAAAAAAAcc/5oLqx-qIr7M/s1600/IMG_0265.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>&nbsp;Muscat. Too hot. Even as the sun sets on the Persian gulf. Here I met a cricket-playing Arab, who learned it from hanging out with all his Indian friends.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XRVsA9Ivt1E/VG9M40eKowI/AAAAAAAAAck/m0IxZaB6xTw/s1600/IMG_0317.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XRVsA9Ivt1E/VG9M40eKowI/AAAAAAAAAck/m0IxZaB6xTw/s1600/IMG_0317.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><br />Casablanca. A mosque on a promotory by the sea. The sea road fills with thousands of people gathering there to see the sunset.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FXtAlb1C3gg/VG9PIg1j9VI/AAAAAAAAAcw/oqBrD0oBHYs/s1600/IMG_0335.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FXtAlb1C3gg/VG9PIg1j9VI/AAAAAAAAAcw/oqBrD0oBHYs/s1600/IMG_0335.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>And here's Casablanca Soukh. A rambling maze of white painted lanes, where you can buy almost everything AND get your hair braided.<br /><br />This gets me to the end of May. But it already shows, I think, that truth is way stranger than fiction, the world is an amazing place, and I shouldn't waste so much energy trying to make stuff up, when what's already there is way weirder and cooler than anything I could come up with.</div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-65082639739858042622014-03-13T10:29:00.000-07:002014-03-13T10:29:53.151-07:00SEVEN INTERNET GEMS FOR READERS, including: Cassandra Claire's NEW SERIES, Spritz, Lestat, Book Boyfriends.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />I haven't blogged for an age, and there's two main reasons for that. One is a vacation in Oman, the other is the end of the financial year. I'll be telling you more about one of those next week (guess which one). In the meantime, I was thinking how quality news about books and reading is kind of scattered across the web, so I decided to concentrate some of it, the things I've been looking at, here for you...<br /><br />1. Our favourite fictional characters are never simple, and seldom entirely good. This article claims that a whole bunch of the best loved authorial inventions are much worse, they're&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/11/psychopath-characters_n_4899112.html?utm_hp_ref=books" target="_blank">bad to the bone PSYCHOS</a>.<br /><br />2. Do you want to read faster? I'm not sure what I think about this. I don't like the idea that reading novels, or anything for enjoyment, could be some kind of race. Maybe work reading, or research? But to me one of the joys of books is taking your time, going over things twice, or speeding along if you want to. See what you think?<br /><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="253" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Z30bQRJBT2c" width="450"></iframe><br /><br />3) Most of the readers of this blog are, well, readers, but still, you might need to persuade somebody else. Here are a stack of quotes saying&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bookbub/18-quotes-that-will-make-_b_4875816.html" target="_blank">why reading is the best</a>.<br /><br />4) Before Twilight, before The Mortal Instruments I first learned the possibilities of the contemporary paranormal from Anne Rice's Lestat, or more accurately, the Tom Cruise/Brad Pitt movie, which led me to the book. The news? Lestat's &nbsp;<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/11/anne-rice-vampire-prince-lestat-interview-with-the-vampire?CMP=twt_fd" target="_blank">ON HIS WAY BACK</a>.<br /><br />5) Speaking of the Mortal Instruments, everybody knows that there's a 3rd series on it's way, to make TMI and ID ending a little better. The news is that there's &nbsp;FOURTH series, set in the same kind of era as ID. Cassandra Claire is a <a href="http://tmisource.com/cassandra-clare/the-last-hours/" target="_blank">WRITING MACHINE</a>.<br /><br />6) Still speaking of the Mortal Instruments, every day is a little bit better because it's a bit closer to the next book. Getting to the last book in a series is terrible. This article describes the process.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/27/book-series_n_4859456.html?ir=Books&amp;utm_campaign=022714&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=Alert-books&amp;utm_content=Title" target="_blank">How far along are you?</a><br /><br />7) And finally, more from Huffpost. We all have our favourite book boyfriends. Apart from maybe possibly they aren't as perfect as we think. Check to see if your flawed 'BBF' is&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/05/nice-guy-book-character_n_4892470.html?ir=Books&amp;utm_campaign=030514&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=Alert-books&amp;utm_content=Title" target="_blank">on this list.</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-84031168803664231632014-01-29T12:34:00.000-08:002014-01-29T12:34:34.379-08:00True Adventures of a Part Time Writer. The Sea of Galilee.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I sat here, at this table, in a state of slight disbelief. In the distance was the Sea of Galilee, the town I was in was Roman, and the restaurant had been built in a beautiful black and yellow stone Ottoman mansion.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-04hdrGEC-Fw/UulQy_IR0_I/AAAAAAAAAVc/ES18NMAO00c/s1600/17112013359.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-04hdrGEC-Fw/UulQy_IR0_I/AAAAAAAAAVc/ES18NMAO00c/s1600/17112013359.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div><br />Where was I?<br /><br />The view south from the restaurant is like this, five miles of Roman temples, theatres, stores, and baths. In the bright November sun (yes, November) lizards sunbathed on blocks of stone, then sprinted away if you came too near, legs lifted high on each side.<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fDyP4KsFygI/UulQjo6ia0I/AAAAAAAAAVQ/KvPqijqMno8/s1600/17112013358.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fDyP4KsFygI/UulQjo6ia0I/AAAAAAAAAVQ/KvPqijqMno8/s1600/17112013358.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div><br />The place is called Um Qais. It's in northern Jordan, the slice of pale water in the distance is the Sea of Galilee, now in Israel. The nearer hills are in Syria and Palestine, and the valley is that of the river Jordan.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4OvwOE5AHZ4/UulRBl3IwvI/AAAAAAAAAVg/hshzRL8SMZU/s1600/17112013360.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4OvwOE5AHZ4/UulRBl3IwvI/AAAAAAAAAVg/hshzRL8SMZU/s1600/17112013360.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><br />The Roman town was called Gadara, most of it is now buried beneath olive groves, but it was once part of the Decapolis, the network of cities that ruled the area. It is the site of a biblical story about a herd of swine being chased into the water. When I was there it was also the site of an owl trying to sleep in a tree and a flock of sparrows determined not to let it.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5rjwGF-y2cs/UulRRU4o_7I/AAAAAAAAAVw/zgR2UvUnlGY/s1600/17112013361.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5rjwGF-y2cs/UulRRU4o_7I/AAAAAAAAAVw/zgR2UvUnlGY/s1600/17112013361.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>The Ottoman village dates to when the Turks were in charge, but they left long ago, when their empire fell in upon itself. Local farmers took it over, but they too have gone.<br /><br />The restaurant serves beautiful lamb stews, to the sound of haunting Lebanese guitar music. The day I was there, though, there were two other noises. The first was a weird trilling, like distant birds. I looked everywhere for them, until I spotted them high over head. Arrow head formations of broad winged, long legged cranes, migrating from the Russian Steppe to Africa for the winter.<br /><br />The other noise was more distant, and more sinister. The muffled thump of artillery in Syria. Damascus is only just beyond the first range of hills, the infamous Golan heights. The whole area is scarred by millennia of wars. In the springtime the hillside is a riot of wildflowers, and filled with exiled Palestinians who throng there to see where they once lived.<br /><br />There are stories everywhere, and some places few of them are happy. All we strive for is an end to this one, and as soon as possible.</div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-43005623743155694282014-01-26T10:23:00.002-08:002014-01-26T10:23:47.304-08:00Who I see when I think of a story, Aisling Loftus, Mr. Selfridge, Levels 4, Idylls of Merlin.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Aisling Loftus (pronounced Ashling), to me, is one of the greatest actresses of her generation (it's the younger generation, so far there's not a ton of competition).<br /><br />I'm editing Levels 4 now (it doubles as Book One in the Idylls of Merlin) and there's one character, Madeleine Bride, who's becoming very complicated indeed. For three books she's been the POV character (except for a brief meltdown in Lullaby of Lies, when she wasn't strong enough to carry the story).<br /><br />Now, though, she's one of an ensemble, and for much of the story - particularly the start, she's not even the lead. She has to play a mature, balancing role, when new players are charging in and making a mess of things. Aisling Loftus does complexity, balance, and imbalance with ease.<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/FwfOG37dNxo?list=PLfsBfbjg9H4IERuW5F3Lb6hQLhLkQvWn8" width="560"></iframe> <br /><br />She also does swimming costumes, which is important. Anybody who knows Levels, knows that Madeleine has a love-hate relationship with her swimsuit. She doesn't swim as much as usual in The Walled Lake, because she needs to organise the future saviour of the world, but Aisling Loftus could do that too.<br /><br />The main reason why Aisling Loftus would be a great Madeleine Bride is that she does an amazing job of hinting at vast inner resource. She can act surface fragility AND inner strength at the same time. I know this because I've been watching her in Mr. Selfridge. It's a great series, and she's the best thing in it. I haven't included a clip of it here, though, because her hair is all wrong. 1908 hair is splendid but it's not very Levels at all.<br /><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/gTmcRLg6Wqk" width="560"></iframe><br /><br />In Mr. Selfridge she's the naive, starting at the bottom shop girl who turns out - surprise! - to be graced with vast talent and oodles of charm.<br /><br />Watch it! You can get DVDs for one dinar each in a shop near my place...<br /><br /><br /></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-40161669760432105182014-01-23T12:29:00.000-08:002014-01-23T12:29:00.014-08:00Ukraine 2014: Massive Dramatic Story, Good against Evil, Giant Super Hero takes on Grotesque Villain.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bright colours and sunny pictures of my friends facebook profile pictures are disappearing. They are being eaten up and replaced, one by one, with this.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Rb5Hhi2BF_8/UuEtDp_4ZfI/AAAAAAAAAT4/LTT6JU7peIA/s1600/1606876_10201844747773356_511022221_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Rb5Hhi2BF_8/UuEtDp_4ZfI/AAAAAAAAAT4/LTT6JU7peIA/s1600/1606876_10201844747773356_511022221_n.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Nothing. Mourning. The long dark night before the dawn. My friends are Ukrainians, or people who, like me, have lived in Ukraine.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />You didn't know that, did you?</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />I lived in Ukraine for three years. It's where I had my first proper job (the company sent somebody to the airport with a SIGN to pick me up). I had the first apartment all to myself (the windows were taped shut, and the water out the tap was hot enough to make coffee with). My first real relationship was in Kyiv. Ukraine is an awesome country. It is the biggest nation entirely within Europe. The people are spectacular. They party with a joy that is rarely seen, though their history is astonishingly harsh. One after another powerful neighbours have rampaged across their great expanses of undefendable, beautiful grassland. In the 1930s the Soviet Union engineered slaughter by starvation that saw corpses piled in the streets.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Then there was Chernobyl.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />It is that history, which gives authenticity to the other things that are so great about Ukraine. In the west are the mountains and forests of the Carpathians, haunted by wolves and bears. Lviv is an ancient city with hundreds-of-years old churches from a dozen different forms of Christianity, some of them rare, and tiny, and hailing from far away.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LtTRlMjsrzg/UuF2JXmhSKI/AAAAAAAAAUs/EQ3lJqSNESY/s1600/DSCN0200.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LtTRlMjsrzg/UuF2JXmhSKI/AAAAAAAAAUs/EQ3lJqSNESY/s1600/DSCN0200.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the east the steppes roll away towards the Caspian sea, much as they did when Cossacks galloped across them.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kyiv, the capital, is a beautiful city, rolling over seven hills, from river beaches...</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x8BNPAjEqOI/UuF2R5XBcPI/AAAAAAAAAU0/2NwROTfujS0/s1600/DSCN0303.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x8BNPAjEqOI/UuF2R5XBcPI/AAAAAAAAAU0/2NwROTfujS0/s1600/DSCN0303.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></span></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...to mysterious wooded graveyards that feel they are the edge of a 1000 acre forest.&nbsp;</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hs6ID7o2D6A/UuF136Z1elI/AAAAAAAAAUk/9YXjK7xayiM/s1600/Hungover+Graveyard+Friday+017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hs6ID7o2D6A/UuF136Z1elI/AAAAAAAAAUk/9YXjK7xayiM/s1600/Hungover+Graveyard+Friday+017.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></span></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-42yhvE1erDM/UuF06crQIfI/AAAAAAAAAUM/Ve4LV07BTWc/s1600/DSCN0314.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-42yhvE1erDM/UuF06crQIfI/AAAAAAAAAUM/Ve4LV07BTWc/s1600/DSCN0314.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are markets heaped with fruit, and a metro so deep the escalator takes 10 minutes to ride. In the winter it can be 20 below, in the summer people cram into beautiful parks, late into the evening.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="p2"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And now it is racked and ruined. You might have seen. I won’t go into the politics. You can find that elsewhere. All I want to say is that this is a beautiful, European capital, where young people are fighting for their futures.</span></div><div class="p2"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fortunately they’ve got this guy on their side, and he’s used to fighting. This is a time for heroes, and it may be that Ukraine has one.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="p1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ti37ZtFZ5G4" width="560"></iframe></span></div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p3"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1">The Black Square on people’s Facebook page was also the signature artwork of </span>Kazimir Malevich, one of the founders of modern art, who was… drumroll… Ukrainian.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><div class="p3"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not many people know that, much as they know little about Ukraine in general. It’s worth finding out, though. Much of this blog is about how YA paranormal and fantasy is not really that fantastic, because real life - if you are adventurous and look hard - is much more extraordinary. (examples <a href="http://jdfield.blogspot.com/2011/07/kim-kardashian-apes-and-whales-and.html" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://jdfield.blogspot.com/2013/11/minas-tirith-is-real-place-as-is.html" target="_blank">here</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://jdfield.blogspot.com/2013/03/bigger-than-jacob-black-cooler-than.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="http://jdfield.blogspot.com/2013/02/ukraine-travel-writing-and-secret.html" target="_blank">here</a>)&nbsp;It is the fantastic things I have experienced in places like Ukraine that have informed my writing.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's worth finding out about Ukraine. I did, and I never looked back.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-48967810373807320932014-01-03T07:55:00.001-08:002014-01-03T07:55:29.602-08:00Happy New Year King Arthur Survey!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Hello everybody. I hope you had a fabulous holiday. Mine was mainly about the food, and a bit about Transylvania... I'll write more about it as soon as I'm sufficiently recovered...<br /><br />In the meantime, though, I thought I'd remind you about a fun little survey I first released 2 years ago. It's about modern perceptions of King Arthur. Have a go, it'll take you a couple of minutes, and I'll compile your responses into an article for when Levels 4 comes out...<br /><br />http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CQYTVKH</div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-40684831804731675232013-12-20T07:15:00.000-08:002013-12-20T07:15:29.793-08:00Scott Westerfield, more Animals in Stories, Editing, and a Secret Photograph of the JD Field Writing Process<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">What's your favourite Potter animal? What would be your Patronus? Or your Daemon? What's your favourite Scott Westerfield animal?<br /><br />I've talked about the appeal of animals in kids books before. It's interesting that it doesn't seem to cross over to YA books that I've seen. There's something about the play of imagination necessary to see the world through the eyes of an animal that maybe stops as we grow up.<br /><br />Westerfield is my latest discovery. I've just read leviathan.<br /><br /></div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?t=jdfield00-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;asins=B002PMVQ7M&amp;ref=qf_sp_asin_til&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;m=amazon&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=000000&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;npa=1&amp;f=ifr" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br /><br />It's BRILLIANT. Recommended to everybody. It's a re-imagining of the events at the start of the First World War, seen through the eyes of a teenage girl and a teenage boy who get caught up in events. It's fast-paced and action packed, but that's not the best bit.<br /><br />The best bit is that the Germans have armies of gigantic, walking war machines, while the British have fabricated animals by blending their DNA together. There are enormous, armoured elephantines, and ferocious wolf-tigers. There are jellyfish filled with helium that float into the sky. Best of all is a whale as big as a village, that produces hydrogen in its guts, and floats through the sky like a gigantic airship. This is the best thing ever.<br /><br />If you've read The Water Book you'll understand why. If you haven't, then read the Water Book. It's free at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-water-book-j-d-field/1114312846?ean=2940045492751" target="_blank">BARNES AND NOBLE</a>. That's got a whale, and imaginatively depicted animals, as well.<br /><br />Fortunately Westerfield's work is such compulsive reading that it won't be keeping from my editing for much longer. I've printed Levels 4 onto 70 A3 pages.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZUsA5u8S5oo/UrRZs9_5KZI/AAAAAAAAATA/ootEdgfxjT4/s1600/Photo+on+20-12-2013+at+17.44.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZUsA5u8S5oo/UrRZs9_5KZI/AAAAAAAAATA/ootEdgfxjT4/s320/Photo+on+20-12-2013+at+17.44.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Here it is, with the corner of my new noticeboard. The corner has a note about the stories I'm going to write AFTER Levels... I'm currently on page 35 of the edit, scrawling arrows all over everything, and crossing stuff out. Crossing tons out. Lucky I've got plenty more to add, so when it finally gets to you you're not going to feel short changed...<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;</div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-36922347000842248962013-12-02T12:28:00.000-08:002013-12-02T12:28:20.124-08:00Thors v. City of Bones, why YA movies fail, and a FREE EBOOK.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I'd been looking forward to City of Bones for a year. Thor, not so much, though I like the character. He's got a lot in common with my character, Eddy Moon. I imagine they talk in the same stilted, regal kind of way and they share a connection with ancient myths. Probably some of the people Eddy came across believed in Thor. Here he is, a bit. If you've read the Levels books you'll get what I mean.<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/7r1aiSdCDq4" width="480"></iframe> <br />Coming into this City of Bones had more advantages than being anticipated. I bought both DVDs in downtown Amman, which looks like this.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cVPFDipOsBU/UpxBcgtu-VI/AAAAAAAAASY/-Y54loYv5fE/s1600/Downtown+Amman.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cVPFDipOsBU/UpxBcgtu-VI/AAAAAAAAASY/-Y54loYv5fE/s400/Downtown+Amman.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />My copy of Thor had bonus audience coughing and head-scratching silhouettes in front of the camera.<br /><br />But still I preferred it. Thor is silly, operatic, but it's lots of fun and it's straightforward. City of Bones &nbsp;- as a movie - is just so tortuous, and at the same time differs from the book in little, annoying ways. And what's wrong with the light? Why can nobody in New York get a 100 watt lightbulb? I think it's a bad sign if the only way you can make a film dark is to - literally - turn off the lights.<br /><br />If you're into YA books or movies and want to read a bit more about this, there's an interesting article here:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.vulture.com/2013/11/why-do-so-many-ya-adaptations-flop.html?mid=facebook_vulture" target="_blank">YA books into movies don't go, HERE.</a><br /><br />I felt bad about my bargain basement DVDs, and so have decided to even out my karma a bit, by giving a book away. It's a novel aimed at teens, probably more suitable for boys - though bright, curious girls will like it too. If you know somebody who has an interest in - or a love for - wildlife and might like an imaginative story, in the tradition of Willard Price and Watership Down, then please point them in the direction of a free ebook. It's about a rebellious, imaginative teenage boy who gets embroiled in marine biology adventures.<br /><br />It's called&nbsp;<a href="http://%3Ciframe%20width%3D%22480%22%20height%3D%22360%22%20src%3D%22//www.youtube.com/embed/7r1aiSdCDq4%22%20frameborder=%220%22%20allowfullscreen%3E%3C/iframe%3E" target="_blank">THE WATER BOOK and it's HERE.</a><br /><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-57346196521285444892013-11-26T09:27:00.000-08:002013-11-26T09:28:37.480-08:00 Procrastination techniques, exercise, and how to work out what book to read next.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Not.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Doing.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Enough.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Writing.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">That was the unspoken resolution. Get more writing done. Finish <a href="http://jdfield.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-levels-story-knife-of-never-letting.html" target="_blank">The Wills Tower</a>, and move on to rewriting Levels 4. The good news is that I've printed out the first draft of Levels 4 in small writing on A3 paper. The whole thing is only 20 double page spreads, for me to scribble over and highlight. I particularly need to find where add some Great Gatsby, and some violence.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And I will do all that, and more, once I get started. Unfortunately I'm still loving the Vulture a bit too much. This is a chart that tells you what YA book you should read. Genius.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bXd_YfwD_o4/UpOxVYb2GyI/AAAAAAAAAR8/PszPKqIzP7g/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-25+at+22.21.00.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="276" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bXd_YfwD_o4/UpOxVYb2GyI/AAAAAAAAAR8/PszPKqIzP7g/s400/Screen+Shot+2013-11-25+at+22.21.00.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />You can find it&nbsp;<a href="http://www.vulture.com/includes/3/daily/vulture/2013/10/flowchart/flowchart.html" target="_blank">HERE, courtesy of the Vulture</a>.<br /><br />I'm not going to read the book, of course. I'm going to get on my new exercise routine, then get that final Wills Tower chapter done. The exercise involves walking up the steps to Jabal Webdei, walking down then back up again. Kittens skitter around my feet and from time to time the mosque drowns out my audio book. Got to get fit before Christmas...</div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-61792422956973036692013-11-22T08:26:00.000-08:002013-11-22T10:05:03.636-08:00What concept did I invent today? And how did it turn out? What are the top ten YA books of the year? Lena Dunham and Girls 3.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I invented the November resolution.<br /><br />The concept is simple. If things are worth doing, then why wait til January? Get them done. What are mine?<br /><br />1. Surf the internet more imaginatively. Find cool stuff. Learn. Get new perspectives. Up until today I mainly bounced between my four or five favourite little corners, which is crazy, because the internet is like a massive magical world.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q_gcyDV4SWo/Uo-Dl8MR_GI/AAAAAAAAARo/5o8EJjxfhrg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-11-22+at+18.16.34.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="252" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q_gcyDV4SWo/Uo-Dl8MR_GI/AAAAAAAAARo/5o8EJjxfhrg/s400/Screen+Shot+2013-11-22+at+18.16.34.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />Here's one of the things I found today:&nbsp;<a href="http://youngadultmag.com/Browse/Article/3577/THE-BIGGEST-AND-BEST-TOP-TEN-YA-NOVELS-OF-2013" target="_blank">TOP TEN YA NOVELS OF 2013</a>. Which have you read? I only managed one, but I definitely need to check out Rainbow Rowell.<br /><br />Another brilliant discovery was&nbsp;<a href="http://www.vulture.com/2013/11/lena-dunham-posts-teaser-for-girls-teaser.html" target="_blank">VULTURE</a>, where I came across tons of cool stuff, including the GIRLS teaser.<br /><br />2. Get a pinboard. An actual physical pinboard on the wall behind my desk. Okay, I did this two days ago, but I started using it today. The plan is that random ideas will go there, instead of in a dozen scattered notepads. I'll see them every day, and add to them, and rearrange them, and be prompted to do stuff about them.<br /><br />3. Blog more. My last post was on Monday, four days ago. Job done.</div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-85589580029230487362013-11-18T22:08:00.000-08:002013-11-18T22:08:17.670-08:00New LEVELS story, The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness, The Wills Tower and Kyle Thompson<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pJ1nRob1VMM/Uor_L_8dfcI/AAAAAAAAARY/1A1AGQtMsMQ/s1600/04-Hurricane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pJ1nRob1VMM/Uor_L_8dfcI/AAAAAAAAARY/1A1AGQtMsMQ/s400/04-Hurricane.jpg" width="362" /></a></div><br />I'll tell you the good news first. The good news is that there's a new Levels story approaching.<br /><br />The bad news is it's not the one people are expecting. I finished the first draft of Levels 4, and put it aside to get my breath, and got distracted by dystopian novels. Got so distracted that I wrote one...<br /><br />Here's the idea: Song to Wake to is the springboard of the Levels series. It's the unveiling of the key relationship, and the paramount secret. What happens next is kind of the obvious way for the story to go, if the world stayed the same.<br /><br />What if the world didn't stay the same?<br /><br />What if in lots of ways it ended?<br /><br />What would happen to the Levels series, and its characters - bearing in mind their special qualities - if society collapsed around their ears?<br /><br />That's what THE WILLS TOWER is about. I &nbsp;<a href="http://jdfield.blogspot.com/2013/02/wool-hugh-howey-99cent-stories-and-new.html" target="_blank">read and obsessed</a>&nbsp;about Wool, by Hugh Howey at the beginning of the year. Then I read the complete Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness. Here's the first, The Knife of Never Letting Go:<br /><br /><br /><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?t=jdfield00-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;asins=0763645761&amp;ref=qf_sp_asin_til&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;m=amazon&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=000000&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;npa=1&amp;f=ifr" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <br /><br />It's set in a world quite like ours, but with two key differences: Men can hear each other think, and the world is inhabited by a second, very different, intelligent species. Patrick Ness really develops about these two things would really mean. People's thoughts are 'noise' and they're deafening, and maddening. The other species are communal, maybe aggressive, maybe not. They are so fused as a social unit that they don't even have individual names.<br /><br />The story is about a boy, the last boy, trying to make his way through this world. So is THE WILLS TOWER. As well as being about Maddie and Eddy, it has a third character, a boy alone, called Roman.<br /><br />We meet Roman when he is in love, and being picked on. He asks a girl out, and a bully mocks him. "Only if you were the last boy in the world," he is told. THE WILLS TOWER in part, is about the process of that coming true, and in part about how dealing with high school can be good preparation for dealing with the end of the world.<br /><br />I'm going to call THE WILLS TOWER 'Levels 2B' and it can be an alternative sequel to Song to Wake to. It will be out before Levels 4, which is being slowed by rewrites and getting the cover perfect. I've just been inspired by the photo at the start of this blog, and this one.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--uC9rM5RcfQ/Uor_JYm69kI/AAAAAAAAARM/zsFsZ5hhjko/s1600/boy+in+water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="390" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--uC9rM5RcfQ/Uor_JYm69kI/AAAAAAAAARM/zsFsZ5hhjko/s400/boy+in+water.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />You can read more about them here,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/jdfieldstories/posts/572443736143494" target="_blank">the most amazing pictures I've seen for years</a>. Hopefully the cover of Levels 4 'THE WALLED LAKE' will have the qualities of one of them.<br /><br />Hopefully it won't take too long...</div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-38426827924406256422013-11-03T12:25:00.000-08:002013-11-03T12:26:25.771-08:00Minas Tirith is a Real Place, as is Alicante of the Shadowhunters: 5 Reasons this is a Great Vacation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I've got a new completely amazing place for you to visit.<br /><br />This city was New York, Rome and London combined. It was the richest, biggest, most modern place in the world. When many people lived in huts of dirt and sticks, and a big town had a hundred families, this was a city of palaces and cathedrals, and millions of inhabitants, from every corner of the known world.<br /><br />Many of the hut dwellers wouldn't have even known it existed, of course, or where it was, but for those that made it there it must have been an astonishing place. Now you can do better. You know it exists, and if you really, really want to, you can go there.<br /><br />Constantinople, later known as Istanbul, simply 'The City.' When King Arthur was alive, this place was the centre of the Western World.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bel7tN7FL80/UnVGpghJD-I/AAAAAAAAAPo/GDJcnmnUt-E/s1600/Summer2010+261.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bel7tN7FL80/UnVGpghJD-I/AAAAAAAAAPo/GDJcnmnUt-E/s400/Summer2010+261.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>&nbsp;These are the great walls, stretching completely across a peninsula, built one-and-a-half thousand years ago and still standing. They were the greatest fortifications in the world, and behind them they kept safe the riches and palaces of an empire. One happy afternoon I walked their length, from the Sea of Marmara to the Golden Horn. In places they are tumble down, and incorporated into the structure of raggle-taggle houses. In others they are restored, and grand, and you can walk along their tops. In a thousand years they were breached only three times, by the Crusaders, the Ottomans, and an outcast emperor, returning to take back what was his.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mr75jeEWOgE/UnVP8ItG8xI/AAAAAAAAAP4/lMPcEhvZ6dY/s1600/Summer2010+189.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mr75jeEWOgE/UnVP8ItG8xI/AAAAAAAAAP4/lMPcEhvZ6dY/s320/Summer2010+189.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>&nbsp;The walls and the city were built by emperors in their lives. In their deaths they were housed in great black coffins, made from ton-heavy cubes of stone. The Archaeological Museum has them lined up, bigger than parked cars and much more menacing. The statuary of the Byzantines that has survived the centuries stands in a beautiful little garden.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i9WmZ36tPbU/UnVRrFRXuzI/AAAAAAAAAQE/4e0RGruX6mw/s1600/Summer2010+166.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i9WmZ36tPbU/UnVRrFRXuzI/AAAAAAAAAQE/4e0RGruX6mw/s320/Summer2010+166.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>&nbsp;The palace of the Byzantines, once the most luxurious and magnificent in the world, has disappeared, but the amazing mosaics of its floors have been rediscovered. They stretch the size of basketball courts, works of art composed of millions of fragments of stone.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5LtDA7e_flg/UnVRsbJd0XI/AAAAAAAAAQI/E9-8zn1eCMw/s1600/Summer2010+381.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5LtDA7e_flg/UnVRsbJd0XI/AAAAAAAAAQI/E9-8zn1eCMw/s320/Summer2010+381.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>&nbsp;The coolest place in Constantinople, though, is here:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yrbq_U7k4dw/UnVR-kCzDwI/AAAAAAAAAQU/XyMIdxygM5M/s1600/Summer2010+414.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yrbq_U7k4dw/UnVR-kCzDwI/AAAAAAAAAQU/XyMIdxygM5M/s320/Summer2010+414.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>&nbsp;An enormous water cistern in the form of a gigantic cave, its roof held up by lines of slender, stone columns. Small lights sit at the base of each pillar, and the light glimmers on the two foot deep water that fills the floor. The light is feeble, though, and dies before it reaches the last line of pillars. The columns and dark water stretch beyond sight.<br /><br />As cool as the cisterns (there are a couple of them) are, they aren't the best bit of old Constantinople. This is it. Hagia Sophia. The holy wisdom. For 1000 years it was the biggest building in the world. If you aren't convinced check out the size of the people standing on the balconies, then see how high the ceiling arches above them, and remember it has arched like that for 1500 years. When Columbus sailed the Atlantic, this was one of the oldest buildings in the world.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XYJkzvK7GGg/UnVZPzQ8R_I/AAAAAAAAAQk/lGnkHtYpP-Y/s1600/Image0142.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XYJkzvK7GGg/UnVZPzQ8R_I/AAAAAAAAAQk/lGnkHtYpP-Y/s640/Image0142.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br />Read that again, and think about it for a second. It was the cathedral of Christianity. When Rome was being trashed by savages, this church was where the great emperors of Byzantium celebrated mass. A thousand years ago Vladimir the Great of Ukraine visited. "We no long knew if we were in heaven or earth," he said of the moment he looked up at the vast dome, that seemed to float above dozens of windows.<br /><br />Of course I've missed out the whole Ottoman Istanbul bit, the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace, etc. Maybe I'll save that for another post. Maybe you'd like to go and see it yourself. I recommend it.<br /><br />There are places on the earth that outreach the greatest dreams of authors and artists. This is one of them. A tumbled stone from a Byzantine wall has forgotten more stories than I shall ever write.<br /><br /><br /></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-15702576661043273772013-09-21T10:05:00.001-07:002013-09-21T10:05:32.175-07:00Adventures in Bombay, Contemporary Epics, review of Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, Curry.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I just went on another excursion outside of the YA and paranormal zones, and it was completely worth it.<br /><br />I read the gigantic, extraordinary, Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. It's supposedly based on the extraordinary true life story of the author, and his adventures in India in the 80s. I was in India myself 6 months ago. To me it was all about the history, the wildlife, and the numbers of people. India hits you around the face with its population everywhere. This is the Victoria Terminal in Mumbai in a rare moment when there aren't - literally - millions of people there.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-x7Bt466rAnk/Uj272gO7d4I/AAAAAAAAAOg/0X4ftiiKPSg/s1600/IMGP0007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-x7Bt466rAnk/Uj272gO7d4I/AAAAAAAAAOg/0X4ftiiKPSg/s320/IMGP0007.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />In Shantaram the lead character experiences or observes EVERY facet of Mumbai. Which is impressive. With a population of 20 million it's bigger than most countries. He describes life in slums, among gangsters, lepers, and film stars in depth. My Mumbai was mainly the tourist facet. The beautiful old Victorian buildings, the jungly trees, the huge eagles on the street, and the monkeys...<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DazMfeQkrt8/Uj25FZUlaPI/AAAAAAAAAOU/jFGJXefVdn8/s1600/IMGP0028.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DazMfeQkrt8/Uj25FZUlaPI/AAAAAAAAAOU/jFGJXefVdn8/s320/IMGP0028.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />His book is also filled with mystery, and intensity. The mystery is cool, there's a couple of clever who-dunnits in the story. The intensity, though, can be a bit much. It might be just me. But there's much love and so much hate, and none of it makes sense, but it's enough to sign your life over to someone else, apparently...<br /><br />The two biggest similarities between the book and my experience are lots of food and taxis. The cabs are replicas of British cars from the 1950s, with 'busy' signs tacked on the hood, that flip out like flags when the cab is busy. I've never seen such gigantic menus, lists of hundreds of amazing combinations of vegetables and cheese and multiple kinds of bread. When I was a kid I loved the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and the fantasy world of Narnia, but Narnia actually resembles my suburban childhood more than the fantasy that is India.<br /><br />If you want to get an in depth, exciting, dramatic over view of Bombay, then this is just the story for &nbsp;you, and everything else in the book is worth it...<br /><br /></div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&amp;bc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;npa=1&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;fc1=000000&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;t=jdfield00-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=as1&amp;m=amazon&amp;f=ifr&amp;ref=qf_sp_asin_til&amp;asins=0312330537" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-39670243327305916262013-09-04T11:05:00.000-07:002013-09-21T10:10:20.894-07:00No Books, No Stories. Real Life.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">This blog is about fiction, writing it, reading it, and things that contribute to it. Real life doesn't often intrude here, and my real life never does.<br /><br />But this post is an exception. Today, making up stories about King Arthur paled in comparison with the story of my working day.<br /><br />&nbsp;In my real life, my real job, for the last six months, I've been working on projects involving Syrian refugees in Jordan. Specifically, I've been organising programmes to deliver English training in the Zataari and EJC refugee camps.<br /><br />I've visited them both.<br /><br />I've travelled around a fair bit, I've been to thirty or so countries, but these are, hands down, the most dreadful places I've been. Before the war I visited Syria. Damascus was one of the most vibrant, fun, historical cities I knew. The people there had dynamic, comfortable lives.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kwWhIRqSsp4/Uj3SwRKNYXI/AAAAAAAAAOw/4_UIkP8ZPZQ/s1600/The+Future.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kwWhIRqSsp4/Uj3SwRKNYXI/AAAAAAAAAOw/4_UIkP8ZPZQ/s400/The+Future.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />The change they have experienced, and the violence that preceded it, have to be among the most horrible things that can happen to anybody.<br /><br />They live in tents in the middle of the desert, miles from anyway. Everywhere they move they are surrounded by clouds of dust, though they can only really move in the daytime. At night it's too dangerous.<br /><br />There are schools for the children, but not enough spaces in them, and even if they were many of the children are too busy to go to school. They need to bustle from place to place in the camp, queuing up for hours for bread, shoes, mattresses, whatever they hear is on offer. Some of it &nbsp;they keep, some of it &nbsp;they try and sell.<br /><br />Today, for the first time in my life, I was in a traffic jam of wheelbarrows. Wheelbarrows are the commercial vehicle of choice in Zaatari camp. They are pushed by small boys, rented by the hour, to haul rice, bread, bricks, blankets, from one place to another. Don't get me wrong. The boys are laughing and shouting. But they should be at school.<br /><br />Zaatari is a phenomenon. It is populated by 150,000 people who have had their homes torn from them. Everybody has family who have died. But life goes on. The resourcefulness is astonishing. Tents and caravans are converted into shops and businesses. I saw tailors, barbers, an internet cafe, shaorma restaurants, bakers and shops selling fruit and vegetables. There is a place you can rent wedding dresses for heaven's sake.<br /><br />There are places, run by amazing teachers, themselves refugees, that are working with kids who have missed two years of school, so they can join the camp schools and not be in a class with children &nbsp;3 years younger, then drop out. I'm planning training for these teachers, so they can better help the kids, and so that they feel like professionals, though they teach in a tent, coated with dust.<br /><br />I've placed a teacher in a camp. She travels an hour to get there and she teaches refugees how to introduce themselves, how to fill in forms, and how to explain their wishes and dreams. Tiny children sneak into the back of the classroom, covered in dust, and stare at her goggle eyed. She treats them all with kindness and smiles. The adults get a sense of progression, that today, a little bit, was a good day. But she's just one teacher, and there are two million refugees.<br /><br />And of course, the camps are only the thin end of the wedge. Jordan, a poor and tiny country, has taken half a million refugees into its towns and cities, the equivalent of Canada moving to America. They deal with it with astonishing sympathy, as desperate Syrians drive up rents and food prices, use scarce water and electricity, work for less than they will, and mean teachers work double shifts to deal with all the new pupils.<br /><br />I don't know if you are the kind of person who gives to charity, who contributed to the Tsunami response. I don't know if you are distracted by the war rhetoric. I don't know if you think that food and water are most important, or that education and security are more so. Probably you're tired of &nbsp;the constant influx of news of suffering.<br /><br />But still, I would urge you to think about it a little, and wonder if you can contribute a little. There are a horde of organisations that are labouring to try and improve conditions in the camps and in Jordan. They focus on sanitation, or child brides, on education, or counselling. I won't recommend one to you, though if you email me a question, I'm happy to answer.<br /><br />All I would say is think about the children, who are forgetting the street they came from, who are adapting to life in a hut, who still laugh, and jostle to play in the playgrounds and football pitches established by aid agencies. Day by day, as they don't go to school, their future shrinks, and is being curved and warped by the decisions of the powerful and the mad.<br /><br />Do what works for you.<br /><br /><br /></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-80918324209626449642013-08-27T21:58:00.000-07:002013-08-27T22:27:53.318-07:00Levels 3.2, Lullaby of Lies behind the Scenes, FREE SHORT STORY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="191" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dpqbLUkRsn4" width="340"></iframe> <br /><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />Lullaby of Lies, the third book in the Levels series, is about Maddie Bride. I wrote it all down, everything that happens to her.<br /><br />The other side of the coin is that there is lots of stuff that happened in that story that I didn't write down. Specifically what happened between Jenna deGrace and Hurley Laker. They meet. There's all kinds of intensity, but I don't show them talking to each, or getting to know each other. Though they do both of those a lot.<br /><br />So last weekend, just for a fun, I spent an evening with them at Levels, and I wrote a short story about it. It was lots of fun, and it really didn't go where I thought it would. The lost small boy was a big surprise...<br /><br />You can have the story, for free, if you sign up to my mailing list. I'll be using it to send you a couple of messages a year, letting you know when new books are out.<br /><br />The <a href="http://eepurl.com/oSQ8j" target="_blank">SIGN-UP FORM IS HERE</a>, so if you'd like a bit more Levels today, type in your email address and I'll ping it to your inbox in the next week or so.</div></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-48005148830359118902013-08-22T14:00:00.000-07:002013-08-25T22:22:01.111-07:00Beer, King Arthur, Pubs, King Arthur, 5 Places You Must Go on Vacation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_o8ucdAQ19Q/UhY222zn62I/AAAAAAAAAMU/NcLQs9q0oEQ/s1600/IMGP1072.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_o8ucdAQ19Q/UhY222zn62I/AAAAAAAAAMU/NcLQs9q0oEQ/s400/IMGP1072.JPG" width="300" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">King Arthur was real. Definitely real.</span><br /><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He might not have been called Arthur. His table may have been long and thin. But there was definitely somebody there who cast a shadow across all the history that followed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Think about it this way. There's a definitely 300 year window where we know NOTHING that happened in Britain. It's like&nbsp;it went behind a curtain when the Romans left, and didn’t reappear until the time of King Alfred. The Britons were in charge, then when the lights came up again they had more or less gone, and the Saxons ruled the roost.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">300 years of war and change. It’s IMPOSSIBLE that there were no awesome heroes in that period. Think of any history you know about the time from 1713 till now. There are warriors and leaders all over the place.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like all the others Arthur left a mark. There are the stories of Malory and Geoffrey of Monmouth. There are movies. There is the amazing Tintagel castle I wrote about&nbsp;<a href="http://jdfield.blogspot.com/2013/08/in-search-of-king-arthur-and-perfect.html" target="_blank">HERE</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And there are pubs.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The photo at the top of the post is a pub in Tintagel. I had to go there because of its relevance, clearly. The plate of bacon and eggs was incidental.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oM_aLMxznhA/UhY3hZh-c6I/AAAAAAAAAMg/GxIVdk60x_Q/s1600/IMGP1077.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oM_aLMxznhA/UhY3hZh-c6I/AAAAAAAAAMg/GxIVdk60x_Q/s320/IMGP1077.JPG" width="400" /></a>a</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was a guest house.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And this, obviously, was a beer. Very tasty Dad said, brewed and bottled in the heart of Cornwall.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9EZuBlJ-J1s/UhY37BalM7I/AAAAAAAAAMo/rQ2hJoIjj08/s1600/IMGP1134.JPG" imageanchor="1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9EZuBlJ-J1s/UhY37BalM7I/AAAAAAAAAMo/rQ2hJoIjj08/s320/IMGP1134.JPG" width="300" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After Tintagel our next stop on the Arthur tour was Bodmin Moor, the third biggest moor in the south west, after Dartmoor and Exmoor. All three are high, bleak, and beautiful, but Bodmin is the most atmospheric and a big part of its gloomy charm is the fact that it’s associated with Arthur’s death.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We got lost twice and were helped by a, then stunned by a rare wild otter boldly crossing the road in front of us. Apparently the water in the Looe, the moor-river, is the cleanest in Britain.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We followed a narrow, winding lane between tall mossy banks to the highest point&nbsp; of the moor. Up on the top is a deserted, windswept lake, called - amazingly - Dozmary Pool and it’s here that Sir Bedivere was told by the mortally wounded King Arthur to throw Excalibur. Twice he told him, and twice Bedivere hid the sword in the reeds and returned to his dying king. The third time he did as he was bidden, and a pale arm shot from the water and retrieved the sword, returning it to the Lady of the Lake.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gFBjVIhIz5M/UhdPT4T2sxI/AAAAAAAAANU/V3zqnb_t8ms/s1600/Dozmary+Pool__1377255503_37.123.76.179.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gFBjVIhIz5M/UhdPT4T2sxI/AAAAAAAAANU/V3zqnb_t8ms/s320/Dozmary+Pool__1377255503_37.123.76.179.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn’t see a ghostly arm, but we did meet cheerful farmer who claimed he’d never been out of the county in his life.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think that’s all of my Cornish adventures that are of any interest. The next post will be about something written, and published, and available to readers, I promise…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-15086058591568570242013-08-11T12:12:00.001-07:002013-08-11T12:12:55.348-07:00Levels 4 (The Walled Lake) FINISHED<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">So far Levels 4 stands at 112,843 words, though I've written and deleted far more. Today, though, I wrote the best two:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6K-c40PhQAo/UgfKB9hpx0I/AAAAAAAAALI/O2CwJpoJP6Q/s1600/L4+Ending.bmp" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="236" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6K-c40PhQAo/UgfKB9hpx0I/AAAAAAAAALI/O2CwJpoJP6Q/s400/L4+Ending.bmp" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>It's been hard going, weaving together a couple of different story lines from the first three books, giving prominence to all the old characters and adding some new ones, has been difficult. There was a patch in the middle where drawing all the threads together was really, really hard, but then, when I started to wind up the tension towards the end, writing got easier and more fluid, until this weekend I wrote the two big, climactic scenes not far from here:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MR5bsyrlTpw/UgfgTa10GjI/AAAAAAAAAL0/0RakqPCj2k0/s1600/IMGP1214.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MR5bsyrlTpw/UgfgTa10GjI/AAAAAAAAAL0/0RakqPCj2k0/s320/IMGP1214.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><br /><br />This is the treasury at Petra, lit by candles. Relevant to the story in an Indiana Jones kind of way...<br /><br />I'm giving myself a week to maybe knock out a quick short story, and let things settle, then I'm getting into redrafting and cover design. Hopefully it won't be long until the story is on your Kindle...</div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-48000279955165792832013-08-08T03:36:00.001-07:002013-08-08T03:36:49.381-07:00In search of King Arthur and the perfect English Breakfast<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">So last month when I should have been writing Levels 4 I was on holiday in Cornwall. Now, instead of writing Levels 4 I'm writing about it...<br /><br />As I've said&nbsp;<a href="http://jdfield.blogspot.com/2013/06/another-week-another-distraction.html" target="_blank">BEFORE</a>&nbsp;King Arthur lived in the 400 years between the Romans departure from Britain and the Norman arrival. Where he lived is less clear, but it's generally thought to have been in the south and west of Britain. Camelot may have been Caerleon, or further south in Somerset or Dorset in the area of Glastonbury or Stonehenge, where Levels are set.<br /><br />Cornwall, however, is where he might have been born, and where he might have been killed.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uX1ga_6XaAY/UgNxGalYnqI/AAAAAAAAAKY/pYwfrmRqZHE/s1600/IMGP1064.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uX1ga_6XaAY/UgNxGalYnqI/AAAAAAAAAKY/pYwfrmRqZHE/s320/IMGP1064.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>&nbsp;This is Tintagel Castle, a jumble of ruined walls on a cliff overlooking this bay. The shadows to the left conceal the entrance to somewhere called Merlin's Cave...!<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--l8iuqO6fWM/UgNxY5VG89I/AAAAAAAAAKg/uVW_2MzvfzA/s1600/IMGP1053.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--l8iuqO6fWM/UgNxY5VG89I/AAAAAAAAAKg/uVW_2MzvfzA/s320/IMGP1053.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>The hall, guardrooms and garden are marked out, though now all that remains are lichen covered stones and gull haunted grass. Steep cliffs all around once made it impregnable. Now they make it a bit scary, with stunning views all down the coast to places like this:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uHwroBmMN2c/UgNzS8WRovI/AAAAAAAAAKw/7sxYBSVZsns/s1600/IMGP1037.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uHwroBmMN2c/UgNzS8WRovI/AAAAAAAAAKw/7sxYBSVZsns/s320/IMGP1037.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>This is Bude, a little up the coast, where I stayed. I could have gone surfing, but instead hunted down the perfect full English fried breakfast and ate it vigorously on several occasions.&nbsp;</div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4651556307907925305.post-47221008547523098232013-08-03T11:58:00.000-07:002013-08-03T11:58:16.623-07:00Levels 4, The Hunger Games, Milestones and Vacations<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Sometimes novel writing, it turns out, isn't a dream come true.<br /><br />Saying it's like coal mining, or fishing for crabs in the Arctic, is ridiculous. But sometimes it's really difficult.<br /><br />Writing is most fun for me when I'm caught up in the flow of the story. An extravagant, exciting scene, or a new relationship dynamic explodes onto the page, and I go along for the ride. Levels 4 has it's share of those, but it's also technically very demanding. As the series has gone it's picked up backstory and complication, and of course I've encouraged that. Anybody who's read the epilogue to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009375LP0/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B009375LP0&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=jdfield00-20">Lullaby of Lies (Levels # 3)</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=jdfield00-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B009375LP0" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />&nbsp; knows that there are a horde more characters ready and waiting to stake their claim to story strands in Levels 4.<br /><br />Part of working this out has involved a lot more, shorter chapters, as well as spider diagrams, head scratching, and storming out the room to make cups of coffee. none of which have been helped by going on vacation.<br /><br />The good news is that I'm getting there, and here's the proof:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kIUNH8X5-a0/Uf1Q_80g7VI/AAAAAAAAAKE/sYej6b1mgZE/s1600/Wordcount.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kIUNH8X5-a0/Uf1Q_80g7VI/AAAAAAAAAKE/sYej6b1mgZE/s320/Wordcount.bmp" width="320" /></a></div><br />The next step is to finish it, probably 10,000 more words, chiselled from the coal face or dredged from the bottom of an icy ocean.<br /><br />Not really. The words are in my head, but they have to get past two distractions<br /><br />The first is an alternative sequel to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005RFA1RU/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B005RFA1RU&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=jdfield00-20">Song to Wake to</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=jdfield00-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B005RFA1RU" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />, set in a world that has quickly gone dystopian, that reminds me of the Hunger Games, but with less people, more water, and a NASTY twist.<br /><br />The second is a set of three blog posts about an awesome vacation in King Arthur country, when I did much less writing than I should have done. I'll try to write them quickly...</div></div>jdfieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04615368132834372594noreply@blogger.com0